Site Mobile Navigation

Obama Seeks to Reassure U.S. After Bombing Attempt

HONOLULU — President Obama emerged from Hawaiian seclusion on Monday to reassure the American public and quell gathering criticism as a branch of Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the thwarted attack on an American passenger jet on Christmas Day.

Mr. Obama vowed to track down “all who were involved” in helping a Nigerian man who tried to set off explosives aboard a Northwest Airlines flight as the plane approached Detroit, acknowledging the growing conclusion that the act was not that of a lone wolf but of a trained Qaeda operative. With more signs pointing to Yemen as the origin of the attack, the White House was weighing how to respond.

The president broke his silence as debate about the episode turned increasingly political. An assertion over the weekend by Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary, that “the system worked” drew strong criticism and forced her to recalibrate it on Monday.

On the international front, a group called Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which operates in Yemen and was the target of a recent airstrike facilitated by the United States, asserted that it had sponsored the attempted attack in retaliation.

United States government officials said they considered the statement, which was posted on jihadist Web sites, credible. The Yemeni government said Monday that the suspect in the failed bombing had spent four months in the country before leaving in December.

The claim of responsibility by the Yemeni branch of Al Qaeda could force a shift in the administration’s approach to counterterrorism in that nation. Until now, the United States authorities considered it important to give Yemen credit for recent strikes against Qaeda training camps and leaders, playing down the American role in providing intelligence and equipment.

But a direct attempt by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to stage an attack on American soil raises the question of whether the United States would have to take broader and more clearly visible retaliatory military action. One government official said the topic was likely to come up before the National Security Council.

Mr. Obama, making his first public comments since the episode, said he had ordered his national security team “to keep up the pressure” on terrorists. He vowed to “use every element of our national power to disrupt, dismantle and defeat the violent extremists who threaten us, whether they are from Afghanistan or Pakistan, Yemen or Somalia, or anywhere where they are plotting attacks on the U.S. homeland.”

Photo

President Obama on Monday made his first public statements on the thwarted jet attack.Credit
Chris Hondros/Getty Images

Although he had been out of sight for three days, he assured Americans he was on top of the situation. “We will not rest until we find all who were involved and hold them accountable,” Mr. Obama said. “This was a serious reminder of the dangers that we face and the nature of those who threaten our homeland.”

The president spoke hours after Ms. Napolitano tried to clarify the statement she made on Sunday television talk shows that the nation’s aviation security system had worked properly.

Ms. Napolitano said that her remark had been taken out of context and that the attempted attack in fact represented a failure of the security system. “Our system did not work in this instance,” she said on NBC’s “Today” show. “No one is happy or satisfied with that.”

In one of her Sunday appearances, Ms. Napolitano had said the system worked once the attempted bombing occurred, meaning that the government responded by increasing security and alerting other planes.

But on another show, she did not make clear she was referring only to what happened after the incident, making it sound as if the system as a whole worked — an incongruous conclusion given that the suspect was allowed to fly to the United States on a valid visa without extra screening even though he was listed in a terrorism database, his ticket was bought with cash and he checked no luggage.

Administration officials said that during a weekend conference call they had resolved to use the Sunday shows to reassure the public, but that the “system worked” formulation was not in written talking points. “Clearly she could have been more clear, and I think she was today,” said one administration official, who declined to be identified discussing internal strategy.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

The visual contrast of a president on vacation while there was anxiety about air travel also drew fire. Although aides issued statements describing conference calls with counterterrorism advisers, pictures of passengers enduring tougher airport screening were juxtaposed with reports of the president picnicking at the beach and playing sports.

Representative Peter T. King of New York, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, criticized Mr. Obama’s silence Monday before the president’s statement. “We’re now, what, 72 hours into this and the president’s not spoken, the vice president’s not spoken, the attorney general’s not spoken and Janet Napolitano has now told two different stories in two days,” he said on Fox News. “First, she said everything worked; now she said it didn’t.”

The White House complained about the increasing political attacks, noting that the system that failed to detect the suspect was put in place by President George W. Bush. “Some people can’t resist the temptation to turn every development into a partisan issue,” said David Axelrod, the president’s senior adviser.

Photo

Air passengers in Pittsburgh on Monday were lined up to undergo tougher security screening.Credit
Jewel Samad/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Mr. Axelrod said the president waited to publicly address the matter partly to gather information and partly to avoid increasing public anxiety or elevating the stature of those who plot attacks.

“There is a need to modulate this properly so as not to increase anxieties or encourage more activity,” Mr. Axelrod said, adding that “we felt it was being addressed at the appropriate level over the weekend” by Ms. Napolitano and Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary. But by Monday, he said, the president concluded “the time was right” to address it himself.

Mr. Obama’s appearance coincided with new evidence linking Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian charged in the attempted attack, to Al Qaeda. The statement by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, accompanied by a photograph of Mr. Abdulmutallab, called him a hero who had “penetrated all modern and sophisticated technology and devices and security barriers in airports of the world” and “reached his target.”

The statement said that “mujahedeen brothers in the manufacturing department” had supplied the explosives. Although a “technical error” led to an “incomplete detonation,” it said, the group will “continue on the same path.”

Yemeni officials said immigration records showed Mr. Abdulmutallab was in their country from early August until early December. The Yemeni Embassy said he had previously studied Arabic in Yemen and applied to return this year to study.

Because he had a valid American visa and “there was nothing suspicious about his intention to visit Yemen,” he was admitted, the statement said, adding that the Yemeni authorities were working to “identify any other individuals who may be linked to him.”

More details emerged about contacts between Mr. Abdulmutallab’s father and the American Embassy in Nigeria. In October, presumably while in Yemen, Mr. Abdulmutallab spoke by telephone with his father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, a prominent retired banker. His father was so alarmed by his son’s radical talk that he contacted Nigerian officials, who advised him to contact the United States Embassy.

Mr. Mutallab visited the embassy on Nov. 19 and told officials his son had been radicalized, was missing and might be in Yemen, said a State Department spokesman, P. J. Crowley. Mr. Crowley said that Mr. Mutallab did not say he believed his son planned to attack Americans, but that he expressed general concern about his radical views.

The information was taken seriously, Mr. Crowley said, but was judged insufficient to warrant revoking Mr. Abdulmutallab’s visa, although his file was flagged for investigation if he reapplied. Embassy officials representing several security agencies discussed the information on Nov. 20 and sent a cable to Washington. His name was added to a database of 550,000 names with suspicion of terrorism ties, but it did not go onto the 4,000-person no-fly list.

Correction: December 30, 2009

An article on Tuesday about President Obama’s efforts to reassure Americans about security after the attempted bombing of a jet on Friday referred incorrectly to the plane ticket used by the suspect. It was a round-trip ticket, not a one-way ticket. And while the ticket was purchased with cash, it was not confirmed that the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, indeed purchased the ticket himself. (The error about who purchased the ticket first appeared in a front-page article on Monday about concerns over why the suspect was not stopped.)

Peter Baker reported from Honolulu, and Scott Shane from Washington.

A version of this article appears in print on December 29, 2009, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: PRESIDENT SEEKS TO REASSURE U.S. AFTER BOMB BID. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe